But it's really not doing anything. Do you know of a company that can help or can you guys share some of your my.cnf settings?

We have 50,000+ members, over 1.3 million posts, and an average of 250 new members a day.

Whenever we have over 550 members simultaneously on the site, our server load can shoot up to 20+ which is insane. Our hardware is pretty well set up, one ded server for the db and one for the forum. Again, all the technical specs are in that vbulletin thread.

I can't remember off the top of my head but it's not the problem. The server load is what is really bothering me. Just spikes when there are a lot of users on it. We're talking server load averages of 50 and higher.

Also, the connection between the two servers matters because if connections between Apache and MySQL are being routed through 10mbps wire, you're going to have load issues while processes stack on top of one another waiting for communication.

I was experiencing symptoms similar to what you are describing when my servers were unknowingly auto-negotiating at 10mbps. Once I got upgraded to 100mbit everything evened back out. Also, their physical distance has little/nothing to do with it.

Also, the connection between the two servers matters because if connections between Apache and MySQL are being routed through 10mbps wire, you're going to have load issues while processes stack on top of one another waiting for communication.

I was experiencing symptoms similar to what you are describing when my servers were unknowingly auto-negotiating at 10mbps. Once I got upgraded to 100mbit everything evened back out. Also, their physical distance has little/nothing to do with it.

Make sure you have the latest Apache 2 - we also had problems with a particular version. (Don't remember which one.)

Check the # of queries running on your site (per page) ...

Check each custom query and make sure
1)__ they are optimized
2)__ are using index whenever possible
3)__ ensure that SELECTs are retrieving from the SLAVE server and not the MASTER (check processlist)

NOTES
- only use necessary plugins - those that add value to your site
--- I recommend removing the arcade.
- vbseo has all their queries fetching from MASTER.
- vbadvanced - I'm sure there's some queries that are going to MASTER when they should be going to SLAVE.